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Why should Canadians continue to pay $90 million a year for a Senate that’s unelected, scandal-ridden and unaccountable?

The case for abolishing the Red Chamber is strong:

The Senate is highly inefficient. The chamber sits only 90 days a year. Senators work only three days a week. Further, recent reports have shown that a sizeable number of the Senators have poor attendance records. For example, between June, 2011, and April, 2012, Conservative Senate Patrick Brazeau: a) missed 25 per cent of the chamber’s seatings; b) was absent for 31 per cent of the meetings of the Standing Committee on Human Rights, of which he is a deputy chair; and c) missed 65 per cent of meetings at the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, on which he sits.

The Senate costs Canadians $90 million a year to run

Before he became Prime Minister, Stephen Harper rightly labelled the Senate a “relic of the 19th century.”

Before he became Prime Minister in 2006, Stephen Harper vowed that he’d not appoint Senators. As of March 2013, he had stacked the Senate with 58 highly partisan appointees

Senators are accountable only to the Prime Minister or parties that appointed them

Canada doesn’t need a second chamber. Canadian provinces like Quebec and Manitoba – and New Zealand – abolished their Senates and are functioning well.

The case for abolishing of the Senate has been made. It’s time for Canadians to muster the courage to renew our ailing democracy.